Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 15:53:11 -0700
From: Tim Stillman
Subject: "Ago" gay male/historical/young friends
"Ago"
by
Timothy Stillman
Keri was running. His musculature was tight and he was
strong; his legs pistoned; his feet hit hard on the forest floor;
the trees scaled round him, as though they were moving past
him, while he was immobile. His breath came in and out, hard;
his lungs felt scalded. His arms worked up and down; his eyes
were wide and black, in the Fall foliage round him. Sureties,
purchase.
And memories of this morning--Coming to town on a cold and
bitter day, to pick up supplies. The first time his father had
allowed Keri to come into town, on the buckboard, alone. The
day had been shivery; the sky had been cones of winter
whisking around him. The world seemed cold and hard and
distant and too up close. Keri the half breed. Keri the sod
farmer's son. Keri the outcast. Keri the lovelorn.
He was naked save for his leather pouch that protected his
penis and balls; his butt was not covered by the leather; his hair
was long and thick and dark as if midnight had woven and
weaned it. He was 14 and in Indian terms he would have
already been a man. In white man terms he was a boy, worse
than that; a squaw boy; for he had been with his love and had
been caught in the falling down barn distant/near to his father's
sod hut.
Kerry was beautiful; his flesh was the color of ripe berries; the
molding of his face was sharp and definite; his nose was a
hawk nose, a proud one; his cheekbones were so high they
almost tilted upward. His eyes were wide and saw everything,
but like the Indian he was (no half breed in his own conception
of himself), those eyes commented on nothing that he saw.
Things were. People were. As nature. As the Great Father.
And there was no need to discuss it, even with himself. While
of course his quicksilver mind betrayed him always in doing
exactly that.
Lance was a farm boy, as poor as Keri and his father. Lance
was shy and not pleasant to look at; Lance was two years older
than Keri. Both boys had fallen in love with each other over a
small period of time; Lance considered Keri to be charitable;
Lance considered Keri to be a boy of principals, and since the
Indian boy was an outcast, surely he would be drawn himself
to outcasts; even to a boy who was painfully thin, who had too
many bumps on his face; the left side of that flat unremarkable
face scalded pink from the fire the boy had been in and had
barely escaped from.
Lance, Keri knew, was beautiful, something Keri could not
understand Lance could not see. They had proceeded to
kissing. In their sacred rotted wood humus smelling barn. Up
in the loft where there were sometimes sunshine splinters. For
there was no where else to go to be like this. Occasionally,
crows flew round inside it. Sometimes there were spiderwebs
about, and tossing gently, where they lay. There was always
dirt and a vague sense of poor history. Sometimes there was
the occasional mouse. The boys noticed none of these things.
They had proceeded. To holding each other in the barn of rents
and gaps and cold winds slicing through. They had held and
felt comfort in each other; the each finding the other his home;
Keri knowing it; and Lance not; Lance always ready for the
real boy, the right boy for Keri, the one Keri truly dreamed
about, to take his own place; for he could never be worthy of
this boy of the tightly compacted muscles; of the long strong
back of curve and serenity; of the stomach that was like iron;
of the wild unkempt winter fields of Keri's ancestors; and the
secret things behind the pouch Keri wore.
The masculine things that smelled of boy and wilderness and
just starting out, looking down from their pawing eager Indian
ponies (they imagined) to the land below them, and they on the
cliff, and how the world was a winter hawk gliding in the blue
as teal sky that went to forever and had more where that came
from, and then the rush of the pawing ponies beneath their
tight butts and thighs, the feel, the knowledge of the attack and
the sudden sure fire victory, the anger, the controlled blood
lust, the need for revenge and retribution that massed the
braves' muscles and set their bodies a little bit stronger than
man had ever been before; the legion of boy brave blood
curdling howls, the feathered arrows in the quivers on their
backs, the bows easy to get at; the feel of the huffing sides of
the ponies ready to run; to run off the cliff; to arch into the
sky; and to fly into the screaming wind of history, to go up to
all those gods up there the Christians brand as pagans in their
lies, and set them right about the dignity of one's heritage.
They had proceeded to taking off their clothes; the Indian boy
wore white man shirt and trousers, because his father (ashamed
of Keri's mother dead so many years, Keri could not remember
her, thirsted to know of her, but his father would never even
mention her name, so ashamed) told him he had to assimilate in
the white man's world, like it or not; his father had told him
that long rifle could defeat him and any Indian any time; it was
numbers now, just numbers--
--those days were over, when a boy could ride across a vast
unsettled pristine plain and could see up close and with awe,
the buffalo like shining black thunder rushing proudly and
ominously onward in the night train of nature, before the white
man trains came, and the white men with their thunder rifles,
on their mission to prove somehow their manhood, to destroy
and destroy some more.
But underneath Keri's trousers, he wore his pouch, that he had
secretly made, himself; the secret Indian reserve beneath the
hollow lie of dingy torn brown cloth. They had stripped, and
finally finally--looked--Keri with needed pleasure--Lance with
needed humiliation--Keri and Lance. Keri, somehow always of
the melancholy known as the past, human token of the limitless
freedom and intense wisdom, that had been the steel blue and
gray sun set far too gracelessly and not of their making.
Lance, smelling of poverty, of the pigs his father raised for
market. And the groveling both boys and their fathers had to
do to whites who did not consider Lance and his father white
either. White is everything. There is nothing more. Period.
Both boys poor, but one boy dying of it, one boy ascending
from it. Neither able to see which was which. And in the cold
eddies of last Saturday, the black eye, somehow omniscient,
omnipotent, seemingly furry like the fur of a tarantula, peering
through the knot hole, into the barn, and up to the loft, as the
boys saw each other naked for the first time. A season had
begun with that; a season neither boy had imagined could
happen before it. And a season had ended with it. For good.
The Indian boy with his long shoulder length night, and the
pale white farm boy with the bowl haircut and the pimples on
his chest and the little whistle of pubic hair, and the penis that
seemed too short, too heavy, the balls that were nests of
robin's eggs grown far too large for the shoot above them; all
clumsy, all awkward, was Lance; all stupid feeling, and shame;
standing in front of Keri in the dark barn shadowfall, who had
no shame at all as he exhibited himself naked in front of his
friend who tried to avert his eyes from Keri, but could not.
Keri, with his flawless face and neck and chest and abdomen
and groin, all smooth and of a piece, one with the other, with
no whiteness at all showing; from which Lance once more
began to turn away, had indeed already picked up his baggy far
too patched trousers from the heap, to put them on again; so
he could slink from the barn and be alone once more and
consider the recent past and the distant past and which hurt the
most.
When the warm delicate, tapered long fingers of Keri touched
the arm of Lance, the arm of goosebumps and lack of feeling
for knowing early on feeling would not be allowed for him.
When the voice of Keri in its sweet huskiness said, "Stay."
And Keri came close to the boy there in the hay loft empty of
hay, only the cold dangerously creaking wood boards, only the
smell of such small human frames and knock- about human
habitations, and the great western plains on all sides of them,
with the reach of all of time up there in the sky that seemed to
go on to a million years and then breathlessly reach out for a
million years more on the horizon, easy at the pink beginning
of memories of summer new day, sure of itself and always to
be.
Pink, said Keri, like your body is, pink and lovely and full of
bones and full of spirit, and full of love that you don't know
how to give, and then he said some words as an incantation in
his native tongue, his only real language, though the words
were made up nonsense, since he had no idea what tribe he
was, or what his language was--school was for rewriting and
ignoring who was to be taught--
--and he turned Lance to him, this baleful passed over
seemingly mismatched boy, and held his smaller Keri body
close to the taller one and put a hand to Lance's rising penis
and stroked it. The boys shivered in love as their arms went
round each other's chest and hands meeting at the back.
And someone saw. A silent cough. A shadow in this barn of
shadows and burgeoning first contact with what they were. A
memory. Keri saw the eye as big as a bullseye painted in a sky
they could not see. Keri stood straighter. A lance of fear went
through him. Lance did not see. Keri would make sure, if he
could, Lance never would.
The eye, though. A future pain that went straight to Keri's
willful heart that counted footsteps where there were none, but
eye shadows fell on his soul easily, he had felt enough on him
on his back as he walked away from his betters, as he looked
around Lance and his eyes went down to the wall at the front
of the old horse stall, and saw the black evil eye out of all
context, out of a devising in a human face to observe with. A
thing that was totally and completely itself without being
connected to a single other human thing.
Remembering all this--
--Keri ran through the forest now. He ran to forget. He ran to
escape the eyes of the townspeople this December 1st, the
morning of this day when he went into town, by himself, time
for a father to trust his son even when he does not; time for a
father not to fear for what might happen to his boy alone;
when Kerry had driven the buckboard into the place of
rattletrap buildings, some canting left or right, the taste and
feel of dust on him. Kerri had given his horses some sugar,
after he tied them to the rail post.
The town bustling with that gingham and leather and that
unmistakable free for the whole day feeling with forever
yawning round them. In their Sunday best. As best they could.
Straining on the leash--free to fly into the sky and never say a
word, but to be noble and never tied to the earth one more
time, or to people or to growing crops or raising pigs, or
slaughtering them; sweating and dying in the summer sun and
freezing in the winter frost; when flesh would be invincible and
clothing would be a part of a person that would be finery and
they would never have to stoop again to the earth to beg and
plead and harvest and dig and work their sustenance from it.
--It was the children mainly, and from the adults, through their
children, Kerri felt this coming from, radiating out of. Children
with their ma's and pa's; begging at the dry goods store for
lots and lots of candy; running boys and girls who shied away
from each other and then, in standing still, in front of or to the
side of each other, ran a little more; eyes plaintive and hurtful
and happy; accompanied by a piano in the saloon hall, playing
loudly and tinkly, and the slaps of hobnailed boots of Saturday
men, dancing with ladies on golden slippered feet, and shouts
and men in the dark there, round the coal stove, getting logy
and sleepy and confused and pixilated and drunk and the dance
hall girls seeing to it they got even drunker.
And Keri, silent, still, observing, not part of the kids running
down the wood sidewalks, eating their licorice or stuffing
candy balls from big glass jars into their mouths, not begging
for someone to pay him attention, not feeling he had a right to
this world, not wanting a right to this world, so white, so mean
spirited. Keri standing in the dust, watching his betters roam
the plank sidewalks and not guessing for a moment perhaps
once they had not been entitled either.
The inculcation of sounds:
The pounding of hammer on horse shoes, at the livery stable,
alive with sounds of the men betting on cards, slapping each
other on the back, describing this harder than ever week that
they half came through alive, and maybe a stage to St. Louis
was in order cause me and the missus and the children can't
take much more of this crap, this kill you dead labor, and most
often for naught.
Keri, fish a long way from water, standing by the buckboard,
watching the ladies in their crude or fine winter clothing,
cloaks and jackets over them, their parasols up and shading
and shadowing them from no sun at all, the habit of parasols,
and finery from the dry goods store, the ones who could go in
debt for it, for that was all that was keeping them from being
swallowed up by the wilderness all around them, ready to
crush them, to rush into this little scallop of civilization and
turn it into a fondly remembered dream of dust one more time.
The wilderness waited patiently, Keri thought, until man had
raped it one too many times or the first of too many times.
Then the waiting would be over. You dig your own graves, do
you not see? Keri thought, trembling at being in a white man's
snake pit. As dogs fought with each other and dusted dancy
down the street of this very small moment in time.
Keri pulled his fringed (his father allowed him, knowingly, one
concession to what his son was) jacket tighter around him. He
pulled his father's lists out of his back trousers' pocket. the
wind cold bit and pulsed round him.
He decided to go to the dry goods store first, it being the
closest and then work his way down one side of the street,
then down the other, and when finished going into the
ramshackle little wood buildings that had the audacity to call
itself a town, store his goods in the wagon, untie the horses,
and be on his way, thinking if no one challenged him to a fist
fight, if no one pushed him down, if no one spat on him, or
yelled at him, or knew about him and Lance--don't think about
it, now--don't--he ordered himself-did he want to know who
had stared at him and Lance last Saturday in the barn? Did he
want to know who had been told? His father being told? No.
That was unbelievable evermore.
Keri was a boy of imagination; it rode impatiently and heavily
on his flint sharp edged thin shoulders. He looked at the
townspeople filling the sidewalks and the manure strewn street
of dust and clay, and people began noticing him; like you'd
notice a bug on a carriage isinglass curtain; and they
momentarily stopped being lost in free Saturday talk where the
sun rose early and set late and Sunday was miles and miles
away; Monday too far down the road to even be contemplated;
forgetting, in their baleful stares at him, that now was for just
being, bone stretching, lollygaging at store windows, the lust
to buy grand stuff they could not afford; it was like a stream
freezing up, as the townspeople looked at Keri, alone in town
for the first time in his life. They expected if they stared hard
enough at him, he would vanish. He wished he could oblige
them.
It angered him; it cut to the bone.
They would not stop him if he was riding his sorrel pony and
had other braves with him; braves birthed from sunlight and
prairie fire; braves of mettle and integrity and cunning; braves
who had seen so many things done to their people and the
getting away with it; the constant theft of land unhelmed by the
school master in the white eye school, that his weak and weary
and defeated father made him attend every week day; the lies
the teacher told; the utter contempt Keri had for all whites; and
that all whites had for Indians; save for Lance; save for Lance
who had lay naked with him on the piny boards in the old
deserted barn last Saturday, during which someone watched
them; at least for a time, till the eye was out of Keri's sight.
Keri behaving much as an animal closing his eyes--if he could
not see, he could not be seen.
The spying, which fired Keri's bones; which did not allow him
to tell Lance someone was watching; for then, Lance would
leave; Lance would be frightened and would dress hurriedly
and half fall down when trying to put on his trousers--
--and tumble down the horribly unstable ladder from the loft a
moment after; it would make a bad joke of Lance and Keri; it
would make both of them ashamed; so instead, Keri put his
face next to Lance's and smelled the boy's sour breath, while
Lance smelled Keri's wind cold breath. And both boys thought
it fine indeed. Losing themselves in each other. Being more
themselves than they had ever been before. Especially Lance.
And Keri's face was so handsome, his mouth open, the tip of
the tongue tickling his front teeth, his eyes full of happiness
and bedazzlement and wonder, as he joyed with Lance, as they
pushed each other back and forth--
Keri hair cuddling the back of his head and one of his perfect
cheeks, his body of hope, his body of perfectly formed together
mirages that were not mirages at all, each inch of study of it
more thrilling than the studying of the inch before, but
exquisite reality; his face strained and filled with all the
emotions that Lance also was finally feeling, allowing himself
to feel, as Lance turned his face so bravely to Keri and they
kissed each other's lips, long and deep, like a hummingbird at
prayer in a beautiful summer flower, the delicacy of the thing,
the impossibility of the possible; and the blue ropy veins in
Lance's face shimmered like glow worms turned to butterflies
under a pure and clear sun that did not pass judgment, but was
intrinsic in what it wanted, regardless whether or not anyone
else could see the perfect transcendence of this particular pool
of blue sky or not.
And they giggled and cuddled and entwined and held and
rolled on top of each other and laughed, and Keri knew the eye
was still watching; knew the shadow of the eye lay heavily on
both of them, but mostly on Lance. Keri was expected to be a
hellion after all. They could only kill him. But to Lance they
could do a great deal worse. Lance was one of them in other
words. It is frightfully difficult to stop being one of them.
Keri, through dent of closed eyes, open only to Lance, put the
shame, the remorse from him until their sexy time was over--
--until both had rubbed themselves to hardness and over the
brink, and had examined each other's bodies as minutely and
reverently as they could. And put hands to pallid and the
summer sunset dusk. After they had dressed and holding hands
once more, then so unwillingly leaving each other, until next
weekend, the weekend that had not come for them, they ran to
their own homes. Keri afraid the owner of the evil eye had run
after Lance. And that he would then run after Keri. But mostly
after Keri. And Keri was sore ashamed. He had been taught
too well, he believed, white man cowardice.
And now--
--Keri ran in his breechcloth through the woods. He had run so
long in the burning cold that he was perspiring as though it
was mid summer and he was sick with a fever in a sun doused
medicine teepee, all coagulated with smoke and sweat and
sickness in the brain, that he could not seem to get out of, that
evil spirits possessed him, that they goaded him in his flesh,
because this morning, before he drove to town, he had gone to
the barn and waited for Lance at the appointed time, but Lance
had not shone up.
Lance had not been at school all week. The teacher said
Lance's father was keeping him home--touch of the colic or
something. Keri had not the gumption to go to Lance's house.
Lance's father did not know he and the Indian ever spoke to
each other. Keri was afraid Lance's father had been the
tarantula eye. Was afraid Lance was hurt, beaten. For Lance's
father did on more than a few occasions, according to the boy,
who showed the stripes to prove it, "beat the devil out of him."
Keri had tried to believe that Lance was only sick. Had tried
not to think about any alternatives. And on awakening this
morning, had been delighted he was going to ride up in his
buckboard to the barn, and impress Lance, who did not know
Keri's father was to allow this, with his journey to town today.
A journey that Lance was going to take with him, sitting nobly
by the redskin on the seat, and they would bravely face the
demons extant together.
And Keri this morning, knowing then that Lance was dead,
that his father had seen, and had killed him. Keri, not having
alerted his friend, had been a part of that crime that had been
committed and he was complicit in that crime, but here was a
week's reprieve, the circuit judge would not be in town till the
following Monday, his regular schedule, and Keri could
breathe till then, could relax, but the dread came anyway; and
the guilt as he waited at the empty soulless black eye of the
barn as long as he dared.
His life without Lance would be what it had been before
him--he worked his father's little farm, he studied hard in the
candle light in the small room of the sod hut at night. And
then this morning, waiting on his friend, Keri had gotten
angry--how dare Lance have used him last Saturday just for
fun, and then had stood him up, had deserted him, and laughed
at him all the week long, and in even more anger, Keri had
slammed into the buckboard seat and had pulled the reins and
had ridden away from the goddam barn, had pushed the wagon
horses too fast for a mile or two, and then eased up,
remembering it was not their fault.
Keri found all the hateful arrogance when the people passed
him by again, and in every store he went into; he had endured
the same kind of curdled superiority his father had endured,
though not as shameful as it had been for a boy to see his
father cut down so mercilessly. He couldn't understand why
his father wanted to fit into the white man's world with entities
such as this, where the children beat Keri up often because his
father told him, do not resist, do not fight back, they will get
tired of you soon if you don't fight back, they will leave you
alone. As in so much, his father had been wrong about this too.
But the boy was too respectful of his father to tell him so or to
not do what he was ordered. So this past week of fear and
hiding from what might have happened to Lance, hiding from
the very real possibility it had been Lance's father's eye
lacquered on them; and Kerri, Lance's friend, who was
remembering all this Indian nobility malarkey, while two miles
distant, his friend was being murdered. Goddam me goddam
me goddam me.
--all fueled Keri's confusion, Keri's anger, Keri's shame;
therefore he endured the snaky silent wrath of the people in the
dry goods store while he selected a precious few things for his
father and his farm, and had paid in sweaty pennies the clerk
made him put on the counter and not into the white man's
hands; then the feed and grain store, the same treatment;
trundling things to the wagon; no fear they were to be stolen,
because there was a strange kind of honor white men had, even
to Indians, out West at least; then the livery, to see if he could
afford now an old rebuilt harness for his dad's horse, a harness
he had been saving up for as a surprise for his father--but the
harness was gone; the store proprietor had said he would hold
it back for Keri all those weeks ago; all serious and true, the
white man was, till today, when he laughed; white men, Keri
knew, do one thing exceedingly well--they lie, and take great
pleasure in the doing of it.
And they smile like weasels, if weasels could smile, when they
have you in a trap, and Keri wanted to cut them all off at the
knees. And all the while, Keri thinking, which of you saw us
last Saturday? Which of you got his jolleys off by watching us?
Watching us pull each other's penis? Watching as I kissed
Lance in ripples down there. And he doing the same to me?
Did you spill your seed on the ground, watching two naked
hard penised boys make love? What kind of monstrosity are
you to desecrate such a thing? And thinking this as he looked
from person to person, each unmoving in his sepia toned sight,
each fish eyed rocks, pegs like in a child's board game. You in
your superiority, you look so stupid, in your fancy Dan
clothes; ridiculous scarecrows that would scare not one crow
away.
Then thinking yet again, one of you saw us and what we did,
and he found himself blushing. But there is one single good
thing about being a redskin in this world of whiteys, no one
can notice if you blush. It almost made him laugh in the
crinkled and painful pinch of this journey into this wall hole of
settlers who stole and killed and exterminated without thought,
and then you sit in your holy little churches and dare to hear
some fool go on about the prince of peace who you and your
ancestors somehow think you resemble. What I have done
could not possibly have been as bad as what you have done, or
continue to do.
Oh Lance, where are you? How I need you beside me. Forgive
my selfishness. Forgive my cravenness. You must hate me.
You must be alive so you can hate me. I caught your seed in
my mouth, remember? You tried to pull me off of you, in your
shame, but I had to taste the elixir of my love. And then you
hungered for my own and we gave our essences to each other
and we were one.
The silence. The eyes avoiding him. Then penetrating his back
bone.
He had spent two pretty awful hours in town, had exhausted
all his father's money, and had so very little to show for it.
He had held himself together inside by thinking of Lance, by
remembering how fun it was to lie with him last Saturday,
feeling the boy's body's excitement when his penis the second
time, the incipient pride in Lance's now show off eyes, came in
Keri's almost girlishly sculpted so delicate china bone hand,
and how Keri had lifted his bottom up again and again as he
squirted on Lance's laughing face, a face that had not laughed
often before, and as he looked then over, so deeply, at Keri, at
the all of him, and rushed his long bony gangly arms round
Keri's neck and brought him close, as they sucked on each
other at a confusing and remarkable and more than confusing
configuration, getting each other's cum on both their
stomachs, and they pushed their penises and balls into each
other, taking one to another the secret of pure unselfish love.
They dwelt in this land of boy, this season of being accepted,
this country of themselves that allowed for no outcasts ever
again, a kind of finding of contentment.
And then they had sat up on the boards of the loft, and they
had spread their legs, while Keri pulled down his own foreskin,
and began rubbing himself, then Lance's own not so shy not so
awkward anymore hand coming of its own volition to Keri's
penis, and rubbing it, while Keri showed Lance how he liked it
the best, and the practice and the experiment and the right way
and the wrong, no, like this, yes, you have it now, and then
Keri's straining backward as the feeling hit him, as his penis
felt molten and free and strong as the strongest tree, as his
toes bent, and his muscles flexed; Keri's hands balanced on
either side of him, his face again straining, his teeth biting the
tip of his tongue, as Lance watched this gloriously beautiful
and limitlessly kind boy being pleasured by Lance's hand, and
then the climax, then the going over, then the whoosh of boy
and the extreme excitement, as Keri collapsed in time in
Lance's arms and they held each other for a long time, and
both were shiny with Keri's own cum.
As an unblinking gutless sneaking about eye watched and
watched. With such extreme wrath and hatred. How
monstrously loud was silence.
As the gutless eyes of the people in town now watched Keri's
back as he rode his buckboard out into the mid afternoon with
winter in its iron tasting grip, and the grass long turned torn
brown, and the dirt and grit swirling and whispering in the
wind of a gray and leaden sky.
On the creaky old weathered buckboard, with the sound of the
harnesses jangling, and the sound of the horses neighing, and
the clop clop of their hooves, and their turning their heads now
and again, asking for release from this chore, Keri's shoulders
slumped.
His heart ached. His heart was not brave. There was nothing
noble about him. He was a scaredy cat. No tribe would want
him with them for even a minute. He would shame them.
Yes, the thought Keri would not think, but that underlay all his
thoughts--this time he admitted it full unalloyed entrance--what
had been Lance's fate. Keri must go to the house of his one
friend in the world. Keri must sneak in on midnight moccasins
when the moon was cloud hidden. Keri must rescue the boy.
But he could not. He felt cold chills at the thought of it. Not
that he was too afraid of Lance' s father but that he knew what
he would find in that shack, or buried behind it in a rude newly
dug grave without even a marker to denote its occupancy.
Death on the prairie was as raw and rude and ugly and quick
and then gone in sullen canopy, as was life.
Every second could be your last. And you might as well not
have existed at all. The spaciousness of it all just gulped you
up and you were not remembered from that second onward.
So Keri kept his own gutless eyes on the horses, and on the
trail and on the day that jostled by him and he found himself
weeping, but made himself stop, because the weeping was for
himself. And he was humiliated enough, without that also.
There were Indian rites to be performed to usher a loved one
into the happy hunting ground. And Keri had no idea what
those rites were. So he could not help Lance, not even there.
After he had delivered the goods to his house, he had run to
the forest, really just a copse of woods, but still a forest to his
own eyes, for it was a place he had always needed to hide in,
to cover from the world in, and he needed it especially now.
He had removed his phony white man clothes, dropped them
eagerly, and now he ran, covered only with breechcloth, and
his body was running from Lance; and the barn, where they
had hidden and opened themselves to each other. It was now in
front of him, even though Keri had not intended ever going
that way again. He stopped. He bent over. His hands on his
naked knees. The body shaking. His breath expelling and
inhaling hard and deep. A climax of pain running all through
him.
He had not run this long for some time. He felt his muscles
quivering. He stood upright and again looked at the barn, not
wanting to, great father, not wanting to; there it was, though--
-- slanting, shuddering, a whistle bone of man's handiwork, the
wind having its way with the wavering structure of it, the
fateful barn so tiny and inconsequential and silly looking, and
almost losing all its structural meaning for a moment in Keri's
mind; the little nothing hovel still stupidly thinking it could
hold the whole of the world up there all by itself, pride and
folly of man; never knowing itself a joke against the vast
panorama of endless gray sky that did not deign even notice it;
and Keri felt his penis lengthening, hardening now, as he stood,
quietly, bravely, watching it, and the thick black clouds passing
over it. This marvel of mechanical engineering of the human
boy body. He took off his pouch.
His penis thrummed and stuck straight up, tight against his
belly.
In spite of himself, this erection happened, and it felt so
marvelously good, for perhaps a multitude of reasons even he
could not sort out; mostly it was just feeling snagged with the
huge power of the world around and above and beneath him.
Being a part of. Being alive. And aware of so much, from
distant star to close up grain of sand, and thus knowing
everything is important, if it came within his realm, and he said
it so. Being alive when Lance was being dead. Horrible but
admit it, there.
Now, it seemed, everything then, to him, was of worth.
Worthy of disdain was also being of worth. How much more
this new revelation made of him than he had ever before
considered, and how, once, he had thought he knew everything
there was to know. What next would the earth and sky and the
ghost of Lance teach him? Keri, poor student, willing to learn,
at long last. No more Mister Know It All. .
And then Keri looked up to the gray ceiling of sky and then
down to the opening of the hayloft and in the shadows, in the
cold, in the rushing forth of a high plains wintry afternoon of
Saturday, a day that was always different from any other day
of the week, stood a boy of long and tall and pale to the bone
no matter how often he worked outside in the man killing
summer sun, with his father--
--there stood Lance, quite naked, totally unashamed, hard
dicked, stroking it, it's single eye and Lance's own friendly
eyes looking right at Keri; Lance, standing with his long toes
hanging off the edge of the board, as though he were about to
take a dive into a lake, and he waved and stroked his hard on,
and Keri waved back at him, and stroked his own hard on, and
then Lance put hands round his mouth and shouted something
or other. Keri with his acute hearing could not quite make it
out, the wind surging and getting heavier, taking the voice
away.
And Keri ran hard and firm on callused soles of feet, to the
barn, where, inside, it was night already, the smell of memory
of hay and horses and the clutch of time passing for good; and
a splinter stuck in Keri's left foot bottom; he stopping to pull it
easily out, then he climbed to the ladder, and he was
overwhelmed by the welcoming of Lance's outstretched arms
as he embraced Keri and held him. And Keri joined him.
Keri felt the pale cold but not so out of tune body against him.
Lance felt the hot supple warm drink of boy body against him,
and they kissed hello again. Keri could stand straight and
sturdy in the little hayloft. Lance had to hold his head down a
bit, to keep from hitting the ceiling. But it was okay to bend,
now and again. It can be done for friendship as well, and that is
only a good thing. If an eye looked, then it looked. If it
enjoyed this, then so be it. Keri would tell Lance today, before
they left for their homes. They would piece it all together. The
would warily fight at each other's sides. As though they had
snorting ponies underneath them, and the fort was veritably
unmanned. Regardless of what all that was to be, they would
survive.
And with this, and more to follow, the sailors were home from
the sea, making everything come right, as it should always be.
And if the eye was evil--well--Keri concluded, as he lay with
his friend and they reached for each other's manhood--evil
eyes can just take eat their own selves to death, at least, for
now. There must be time for love.
Before the hunt and the struggles start
one
more
time.
And
winter
closes
in.